United States or Senegal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
De Comines reckons that his whole fighting force at this time did not exceed nine thousand men, with fourteen pieces of artillery. Against him at the opening of the valley was the army of the League, numbering some thirty-five thousand men, of whom three fourths were supplied by Venice, the rest by Lodovico Sforza and the German emperor.
He had a strong supporter in the Milanese captain, Jean Jacques Trivulzio, who had entered the French king's service after Alfonso's flight from Naples, and had never forgotten his old griefs against Lodovico and his son-in-law.
His son, Giovanni Galeazzo, aged eight, would in course of time have succeeded to the Duchy, had it not been for the ambition of his uncle Lodovico. Lodovico contrived to name himself as Regent for his nephew, whom he kept, long after he had come of age, in a kind of honourable prison.
But his son Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, who had frequently visited Milan during the long war with Venice, had never forgiven Lodovico for treating with the Venetians independently, and made no secret of his hatred for his brother-in-law. The quarrel between the two princes was naturally embittered by the complaints which Alfonso received from his daughter Isabella, Duchess of Milan.
Alessandria was now the only fortified town in the district which could arrest Trivulzio's onward march, and Lodovico, trusting to Galeazzo's valour, was confident he would be able to hold the town until the arrival of Maximilian's reinforcements.
At the same time Lodovico wrote to Francesco Gonzaga "This morning we entered Milan, and it would be impossible to describe the immense jubilation of the whole city and all classes of people, or the extraordinary demonstrations of affection and good-will that we have received on all sides.
In 1482 Roberto di Sanseverino, the valiant captain who had been one of the chief instruments in restoring his kinsman Lodovico Sforza to his country, left Milan in a rage, because he did not consider his salary sufficient, and offered his services to the Republic of Venice.
A document is extant which shows that Lodovico continued to fill this office at the Customs till 1494, when the heirs of Lorenzo were exiled; for in the year 1512, after the Medici returned to Florence, he applied to Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, to be reinstated in the same.
To this point Dante retired when the death of Henry VII. extinguished his last hopes for Italy. At one extremity of the wedge-like block which forms La Vernia, exactly on the watershed between Arno and Tiber, stands the ruined castle of Chiusi in Casentino. This was one of the two chief places of Lodovico Buonarroti's podesteria.
The remodelling of the library of the Castello di Pavia was another important work which was carried out in the year 1492, by Tristano Calco the historian and kinsman of the chief secretary, under the eye of Lodovico himself, while he and Beatrice spent the summer at Pavia.
Word Of The Day